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Welcome to my first drive video on this bmw x4m competition lci this is the brand new 2022 model this video is sponsored by tidal more about them a little bit later on i’ve had this car in germany and austria over the past three days and covered a thousand kilometers in it so i feel like i know it pretty well as you probably know i was very critical about
The pre-facelift x3m competition and x4m competition i basically said that the ride was unacceptable it was way too stiff it felt like you’re in sport plus when you’re actually in comfort this latest lci x4m competition and the x3m competition comes with a restyled front end and back end it comes with new m3 4 style alloy wheels comes with a revised interior
But most importantly for me it comes with a revised suspension setup so apparently when you’re in comfort now you actually get a comfortable ride under the bonnet we have the now familiar s58 engine so it’s a three liter inline six twin turbo producing 510 horsepower and 650 newton meters that torque figure has actually jumped from 600 newton meters in the
Pre-facelift car so i’m also hoping that that’s going to improve some of the low down lack of grunt or torque that i experience in that x3m competition back in 2019 all of that power and torque is fed through an mx drive system and again through a very familiar zf8 speed automatic gearbox bmw claim that this will do the naught to 62 sprint in just 3.8 seconds
Which isn’t bad for something that tips the scales at just over 2 tons this revised x4m competition retails at 91 000 pounds in the uk and that’s before any optional extras that sounds like a lot of money when you consider the m3 competition x drive is 10 000 pounds less and in terms of looks well i’m not the biggest fan of any x4 or any x6 as many of you
Probably already know for me it would be the x3m competition it’s 2 000 pounds cheaper it’s more practical and it’s much better looking but i do realize that looks are subjective jumping in here well it’s a lovely place to sit we’ve got the updated and larger infotainment screen with idrive seven we’ve got the digital dash this particular car has a head-up
Display i think that’s actually standard also on uk cars these seats are lovely i think they call them m sport seats really comfortable really supportive in terms of driving position well it’s pretty good i initially felt like i’d sat quite high in this car but i did jump out of my m3 that has carbon buckets and now i’ve spent three days in it it feels really
Good there’s a good three inches above my head the rear bench although it’s not the biggest sort of three seater you can get two adults back there in comfort and in fact i came out to munich about two weeks ago with tim schmie and both of us jumped in the back of one of these because we were collected by bmw and we had plenty of legroom and in fact just about
Enough headroom and that particular x4m also had a panoramic roof which i’ll definitely recommend if you’re going to have passengers or kids in the back because as you can probably see it’s quite dark back there there’s not much glass and it does get a little bit claustrophobic anyway let’s get this car out on the road and talk about what it’s been like to live
With for the past three days i travel a lot with what i do these days in fact this evening i’m about to jump on my 20th flight of this year and we’re still only in may i also do a lot of miles behind the wheel of various cars as you know because that’s why you watch my content to keep me sane and to keep me entertained i like to listen to high quality music
Whilst i do that traveling or driving many of us invest in high quality sound systems for our cars just like this x4m competition and many of us also invest in a good set of high quality headphones so when tidal got in touch with me about their high quality music streaming platform i was really keen to give it a go tidal has over 80 million songs and 350 000
High quality videos plus original video series podcasts and thousands of expertly curated playlists tidal is available in free hi-fi and hi-fi plus tiers with the hi-fi plus membership offering access to innovative listening experiences and immersive audio and your most listened to artists every month receives 10 of your subscription fee and that’s part of the
Hi-fi plus offering i’d really suggest giving tidal a try use the link below in the description for a free 60-day standard hi-fi plus plan you can cancel your subscription at any time but you genuinely won’t be disappointed like myself i jumped in my car a couple of weeks ago and compared tidal to another streaming app that i’ve used in the past and straight
Away you could hear how clear and crisp it was compared to that and now i’ve been listening to it well especially out here on this three-day road trip and i’m really addicted to how good the sound quality is i’m going to start by talking about what a pleasure this car has been to live with for the past three days it’s been an absolute mile muncher as we’ve
Already talked about but it’s the way it’s eaten those miles it’s just done it without any fuss whatsoever it’s a really comfortable driving position with a really commanding view down onto this sao paulo yellow bonnet and the most important thing for me as we talked about on the outside of the car is have they sorted out the ride quality well i can report
That it feels so much better far improved over the pre-facelift car but there is a caveat to that we’re on super smooth german tarmac and this tarmac kind of rewards pretty much anything sport car or even supercar related but patrick and i did take it down some pretty rough roads just to test that suspension similar roads that would get in the uk our arb
Roads and the car feels much much better than i remember the pre-facelift version feeling when you knock it back into comfort it just settles down and becomes a really nice car to drive around in and that’s what you want surely in your x3m or x4m you want it to be fast and sporty because you bought the m model but primarily you also want it to be comfortable to
Cruise around in with the family or on your own you want the suspension to just settle down and make you feel like you’re in a luxury car as well as a sports car when you hit your m button when you do hit your m button you bring up all your favorite presets you then want it to press on does it feel any quicker with that 50 newton meters extra of torque well
Again it’s really hard to judge because i haven’t driven a pre-facelift for a couple of years now but it certainly feels punchy i mean there’s some serious bass and it’s got 3.8 seconds and in fact i time this on my race box off camera at 3.6 seconds to 60 miles an hour so we’re talking about a two-ton suv that will do not to 60 in three and a half seconds i
Mean that’s absolute madness so it feels almost as quick as my m3 competition x drive and i think that’s quick enough for something this size but one thing it does suffer from still is lack of low down torque i don’t notice it too much in my m3 because that weighs about 300 kilos less than this but when you’re in a high gear so i’m in fifth now and it’s at 1800
Rpm i put my foot in the floor and it hardly builds there’s nothing there’s nothing there’s nothing get over the brow then the turbos kick in at about two and a half yeah and then it picks up pace but sometimes that can catch you out and when you’re on a bit of the autobahn you’re seeing it i don’t know 130 140 clicks if you get to a slight incline the gearbox
Actually has to change out of eighth and down to seventh sometimes down to sixth because it just doesn’t have enough torque to keep the car at a constant pace and i find that almost amusing when you’re talking about something that has newton meters and over 500 horsepower and that’s just because at the end of the day it’s a combustion engine with two turbos and
When those turbos aren’t spooling well you’ve got no boost then therefore we haven’t got much torque or horsepower down low so it does struggle and you can catch it out at times and i think that’s where the b58 in the x3 or x4 m40i is still a better engine for your everyday duties sure this thing is ballistic once you wind it up but the b58 still has that low
Down torque available and it just seems to get going a bit better in terms of sound well it’s okay but like many modern bmws or modern m cars a lot of it is fakery being piped around the cabin but we need that because of the regulations that stop bmw m producing organic exhaust sounds so some of it is a real engine though there is a bit of induction sound
There and there’s definitely some exhaust sound on the outside of the car but from the driver’s seat i’m mostly hearing synthesized sounds but like i said they’re not bad they sound pretty good and the gear changes are actually prefer the gear changes in this over my m3 there’s sort of less dramatic if you like and they sound a lot more realistic so although
It sounds not perfect i think it’s about as good as you’re going to expect in a modern day car that was so produced in 2022 and terms of handling well we’ll go through here really stable on the brakes i mean defies physics it really does i’m in sports suspension at the moment this has m adaptive suspension as standard so you’ve got three settings you’ve got
Comfort sport and sport plus once again you never need sport plus even out here in germany on smooth roads unless you take it on track and well it would be quite amusing but i can’t see many owners taking their x3m or x4am out on track but if you did that’s probably where you would use sport plus but on the road sport is firm enough and actually comfort does
A very good job and keeps the car nice and supported the brakes feel mega same brakes that are in the current m3 and m4 and when you step on them like now i mean yeah you’re not gonna need to stop much quicker than that that’s unreal it has michelin ps4s tyres all round so you’ve got plenty of grip come rain or shine let’s just do a little launch launch
Active here we go and there’s 100 okay now it’s just so fast ballistically fast and in all weather in terms of its handling dynamics well we’ve already talked about how good it feels it feels wrong in many ways because i’m sitting up so much higher than i would be in an m3 or an m4 but yeah it feels so familiar sure the center of gravity is higher and it
Doesn’t quite have those handling dynamics but it’s really really impressive in fact let’s rewind a couple of days where i took this up an austrian slippery austrian mountain pass with patrick next to me and a boot full of luggage that should hopefully display how capable this car is on a really epic piece of road hopefully you enjoyed that and the
Video clip gave you half an idea of just how capable this new x4m competition is for me if it was my money well i’d still buy an m3 competition x drive for 10 000 pounds less and spend that on options kind of like i already have done but if i need an suv i’d buy the x3m competition because as we talked about right at the start i subjectively think it looks
Better it is more practical and it’s a little bit cheaper but i have heard through the grapevine and through a lot of bmw m technicians that the x4m is slightly more driver focused than the x3m so it’d be interesting to drive them back to back one day hopefully you enjoyed this first drive video massive shout out and thanks to tidal for sponsoring it i urge
You to use the link below in the video description to get your 60 day free trial i’ve been listening to it with patrick nonstop in this car on the journey and honestly the quality and the crispness of the music is second to none it really really is amazing especially if you’ve got a good sound system in your car or if you’ve got a good sound system at home
Or a good set of headphones just like i’m about to put on as i get on my 20th flight in a couple of hours time until the next video thanks so much for watching and i’ll see you then cheers you
Transcribed from video
1st Drive 2022 BMW X4M Competition LCI | 4K By Joe Achilles
